


Scuffed and Smudged

by Lionescence



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, M/M, Sheith adopts Kitbull, that's pretty much what this fic is
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-05
Updated: 2019-03-05
Packaged: 2019-11-12 13:21:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18011672
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lionescence/pseuds/Lionescence
Summary: Ready to settle down into their married life together, Keith and Shiro make the final step.Time to adopt a pet.





	Scuffed and Smudged

**Author's Note:**

> A Kitbull Sheith fic was inevitable, surely?
> 
> If you haven't seen the short, here's a link to it: [Kitbull](https://youtu.be/AZS5cgybKcI)

“So! Tell me what brings you two fine gentlemen here!”

Their guide was an incredibly enthusiastic Antipodean with bright ginger hair and a matching, magnificent moustache, who nearly yanked Keith’s hand out of its socket when shaking it and introducing himself as Coran. Shiro was no help, chuckling quietly at his husband’s discomfort, but quickly took over the social aspect of this little adventure.

Shiro prattled on happily as Keith followed: how they’d recently married and spent three months travelling all over the world while their best friends helped finalize the purchase of their new home — the only wedding present they’d accept from them, because they would both rather be hiking somewhere or exploring a new city than dealing with paperwork. They’re all moved in and settled now, and were ready for the next step: they wanted to adopt a dog.

“We’ve got a great back yard, it bumps right up against Arus Common and we got permission for a private access gate,” Shiro was saying. “We only had a flat before so we couldn’t have a pet, but now —” and his sigh was so wistful, as if all his dreams were coming true, and Keith bit back a smile and the teasing need to ask him if getting married and travelling the world weren’t enough of dreams coming true.

Instead he said, “Shiro loves dogs. I mean, _loves_ dogs. I get bombarded every day with photos of all the dogs he’s met that day. It’s practically harassment.”

“But _dogs_ , Keith,” Shiro retorted, sharp grey eyes turning soft and puppyish and gods, if there was ever a dog in existence that could pull off that look better than Takashi Shirogane, Keith had yet to meet them.

“Yes, Takashi. Dogs. I know.”

“Well, I certainly hope you’ll find the perfect new friend here!” Coran said, leading them through a set of double doors, where the noise level shot up and Keith half-wished he’d brought his noise-cancelling headphones with him, but he hadn’t wanted to be rude. Perceptive as ever, Shiro sensed the way he stiffened up, and Keith found his hand immediately clasped within Shiro’s flesh one, the thumb stroking the back of it gently. The thumb pressed in question — _“Are you okay?”_ — and Keith squeezed back in reply — _“I’m fine.”_

And Keith couldn’t help but fall in love with him all over again, that Shiro managed to take care of him even as they were assaulted by the sounds of what felt like a hundred excitable dogs, that Shiro could focus on him still when, quite frankly, he just stepped into his idea of heaven.

All around the walls were dozens of pens, most of them open and their occupants out in the central play area, tussling or playing or cuddling or simply watching. There were only a couple of big dogs, an old English mastiff and an alert, bright-eyed Scottish wolfhound, but all the others ranged from Labrador-sized to terriers. Somewhere in this riot was Shiro’s dog.

This was Shiro’s moment, so Keith merely stood back, leaning against a set of pens while his husband picked his way through the spillage of dogs, speaking lowly with them and handing out pettings and scritches indiscriminately. It was one of the reasons Shiro loved dogs so much: they didn’t care that one of his hands was made of metal.

Coran laughed gently beside him, shaking his head. “Oh dear. I see this may take you some time indeed. Perhaps I could offer you both a cup of tea?”

“Oh. Oh yes, please.”

“Milk and sugar?”

“Milk and one sugar for both, thank you, Coran.”

“Right-o! Back in a tic!”

Alone for now, Keith continued to watch Shiro make new friends by the minute. He smiled: this was why his nickname for his husband was ‘Puppy’.

 

 

 

Dogs. Dogs dogs dogs dogs dogs.

Shiro was thirty-one and his brain was stuck in a loop of _dogs dogs dogs_. He’d lost count of how many he’d petted and picked up and belly-rubbed, how many times he’d been sniffed and licked and snuffled. This was the best day of his life.

Well, after his wedding day. Obviously.

But dear gods, how was he going to choose? How would he know which dog was The One? They’d talked about breeds and personalities and so on, and he wasn’t sure if it was a blessing or a curse that Keith was so easy-going about everything. His only condition was, “No yappy ones. I will drop-kick it into the woods.” Which, fair enough. Keith appreciated a different sort of companionship. He liked dogs in that he generally found them inoffensive, but this was all on Shiro, so he needed to meet a dog that he would love, that would love him, and that Keith could live with peacefully.

He was kneeling by a pair of Schnauzers when he spotted a heavy shape out of the corner of his eye. Without stilling his hands petting the Schnauzers, he raised his head slightly, and there in a little corner by some cushions and stuffed animals was a pit bull, nudging at a plushie shaped like an elephant with its nose. Its pale cream fur was covered in scars, and it didn’t seem to want to put any weight on its front right paw. There was a snuffle and a whine, before the dog circled around and settled, smacking its chops before dropping its head.

He gave the Schnauzers a final pat each, and slowly made his way towards the pit bull. It looked up as he approached, still and cautious; if Shiro didn’t know any better, he’d assumed the dog was looking to bolt. He lowered himself to a crouch, and then nearly crawled on his hands and knees as he got closer, hoping that by diminishing his own size, the dog wouldn’t feel threatened.

“Hey,” he crooned, when he was close enough. “Hey, buddy. Wanna say hi?” Holding out his flesh hand in a loose curl, neither flat nor fist, he waited. The pit bull kept its head up, looking warily between Shiro’s face and Shiro’s hand, before rising up on its front legs so it could lean a little closer to sniff him. It never once took its eyes off him.

Shiro knew that pit bulls had a reputation: his mother had been terrified of them and he remembered more than one instance of being scooped up high out of reach of a pit bull he’d wanted to pet, remembered being carried away, remembered looking over his mother’s shoulder to see the dejection on the dog’s face, hear the sad whimpering, neither of them understanding the why of what just happened. Yet for all that, every pit bull he’d met as an adult since was nothing but dopey sunshine in the form of a battering ram.

And this one… was so hesitant. A hundred and one scenarios ran through Shiro’s head as he waited, and none of them favoured the dog. The scars were all deep gouges and bites; it had seen the inside of a fighting ring, and he knew what that was like. He tried to channel all his empathy into his outstretched hand, even pulling his sleeve back slightly to show the first few scars on his arm: _look, we’re the same, you and me. It’s okay. I understand._

The dog let out a low whine, almost a question, and with a slow blink made up its mind. It pushed its big head against Shiro’s hand gently, almost as a voluntary gesture, like it wanted more — so much more — but didn’t dare ask. The corner of Shiro’s mouth quirked up, and oh how he wanted to give this dog everything. Slowly he pressed his hand further in, deepening their shared touch, and to his delight there came the quiet _thump-thump-thump_ of the dog’s tail hitting the floor. The thumping got more insistent when Shiro moved to scratch behind its ears.

“Aw, there you go,” Shiro murmured, still keeping his voice low despite the volume of all the other dogs. “You’ve been through some wars, too, huh?” He sat back on his heels, watching in wonder as the dog opened up, showing a doggy smile and a lolling tongue, panting happily at the attention. It was flopped on its belly now, soft and pliable and willing, and Shiro was sure that here was their dog.

Before he could call Keith over, a ball of furious black fur came yowling out of nowhere, and Shiro had his hand pulled back, three deep scratches on the back of it. He must have yelled, because he heard Keith and Coran running over; everything happened so fast. When he looked down there was the smallest black cat he’d ever seen, about the size of an aubergine, growling low and menacing at him, taking firm position between him and the pit bull.

“Smudge!” Coran scolded, still holding a teaspoon in one hand. “Oh not again! You keep doing this. Please, Shiro, come here and let me take a look at that.”

Shiro stood dumbly, going to Coran yet his eyes never left the black cat, who was still growling and spitting, claws out, despite the fact that the pit bull was now nudging and licking it, making low huffs and whines. He couldn’t understand how the cat could still continue to be so adamantly furious when it was being lavished with comfort by the pit bull, or why the pit bull was even bothering.

“Are you okay?” Keith asked, wincing when he saw the gashes on Shiro’s hand. “Wow, that’s one angry cat, huh?”

“Apparently the angriest,” Shiro managed before he was led out of the room altogether, leaving Keith behind with the cat and pit bull. He didn’t know why the whole thing left him so dazed, why he felt he needed to make sense of it. The cat had attacked him apropos of nothing.

Blinking back into the here and now, he found himself shoved into a chair in a back room, a cup of tea on the table beside him, and Coran fastidiously cleaning his scratches, muttering darkly to himself about “— that damned cat. I’m so sorry about all this. I’m just going to get the antiseptic gel, back in a flash.” He wasn’t bleeding anymore, but he could feel the beginnings of an itch around the scratches.

“It’s all right, really,” he tried. “Maybe I spooked that cat?”

“Oh you did no such thing,” Coran said, sitting down again and squeezing some gel onto Shiro’s hand. “He’s been a menace since he got here. Can’t put him with the other cats because he insists on being with Scuff — nearly lost an eye trying to separate them, let me tell you! — but he terrorizes anyone and anything that comes within two feet of Scuff.”

“Scuff?”

“That sweet pittie you were with.” Coran finished wrapping the bandage around his hand, giving it a firm pat. “They’re inseparable, have been since they were brought in. Which, I fear, is making it very hard to get poor Scuff adopted.”

Shiro could sense a history behind all this, so he asked.

He’d been right: Scuff had been rescued from an illegal dog-fighting circuit. He wasn’t made for it, really, too sweet-natured to be a fighter, unwilling to bite and maul. That sweetness led to his scars, and nerve damage in his front right paw. When they found him, he was in a pen that was too small, but he shared it with the black cat, who’d hissed and yowled and screamed at their rescuers, threatening with tiny needle-like claws and teeth.

“Times like this, one wishes animals could talk,” Coran was saying. “I’d love to know how those two met, and what drove them together. Smudge seems hell-bent on protecting Scuff, doesn’t matter that Scuff is, well, about fifteen times his size. And Scuff seems to be the only thing that soot ball of a cat allows near him! Who knows, maybe those two saved each other.”

Shiro understood altogether.

Because he’d been a prisoner of a notorious drug cartel after a sting gone wrong, locked in the dark and made to fight other prisoners for the amusement of others. He hadn’t wanted to: that hesitation earned him his scars. But Keith had led the elite task force to take down that cartel, had been the one to fight his way to him and fight his way back out, protecting him all the while. Keith had been there during his recovery, his rehabilitation. Keith had stayed with him through his nightmares and phantom pains and PTSD. In every which way, Keith had fought for him.

Hell-bent. Absolutely.

But Shiro had been the one to soften Keith’s hard edges, worm his way into that closed-off heart. Shiro had been the one to coax the first true smiles out of one of the most difficult, mistrustful people he’d ever met. Shiro had been the first to get close, to show Keith how to let others get close, too.

“Goodness! We forgot all about your husband!” Coran yelped, nearly knocking over the cup of tea Shiro had been nursing through his thoughts. “Best we get back to him, eh?”

What they found when they walked back through the double doors did not surprise Shiro in the slightest, and he had to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing at the way Coran’s jaw dropped open.

Keith was sitting on the floor, propped up by the cushions, the elephant plushie at his elbow, legs stretched out fully. Scuff was draped across his knees, the absolute picture of contentment, tail thumping on the floor in a simple, steady rhythm. And within his folded arms sat the black cat, snoozing away. Keith himself looked like he was dozing, too, despite the fact that the noise levels hadn’t really changed, as if with the two animals near him, he was in a bubble of their own making.

An emotion Shiro couldn’t name threatened to swallow him: his husband, prickly and difficult and averse to too much noise and socializing, was calm and quiet in the middle of doggy chaos.

“Oh. Oh _my_. I’ve never — _what_ — I don’t understand…”

Shiro laughed then, shrugging. “So. How about we adopt both of them?”

 

 

 

Every so often, Keith would look up from his book at a particularly excitable bark, or at the sound of his husband’s rich laughter. They were in the common, out in the sunshine, but while Shiro was more than happy to be rough-and-tumbling with Scuff, Keith was content to sit and read, or, inevitably, set his book aside on the bench to watch them play.

In his lap, Smudge sat in a perfect little curl, keeping a lazy eye on the proceedings. Sometimes he stopped to wash himself, or get up, re-curl himself in his lap, and purr mightily. Sometimes he’d reach a paw up, dabbing at Keith’s chest, as if to say, _hey, you know I’m still here, right?_

Shiro was currently in a game of tug-of-war with Scuff, both digging their heels in and rucking up the ground with their efforts. They’d been at it for a little while, and Scuff seemed to have had enough, because he waited for Shiro to make another big pull, and he let the rope slip out of his mouth, sending Shiro toppling over onto his ass with an undignified yelp. Deeming that a success, Scuff immediately set himself upon Shiro, climbing onto his chest with a big _boof!_ and proceeded to lick Shiro’s face as messily as doggily possible.

Smudge turned his head to look up at Keith, and said, _Mrrrowp_.

Keith chuckled. “Yeah. I know they’re ridiculous. But what can we do?”

 _Mreew_.

“No, I’m pretty sure we’re stuck with them.”

 _Mweh_.

“I know. I love them, too.”

“Keith! Keith, help me! _Bleargh!_ ”

Both Keith and Smudge looked over to where Shiro was still flat on his back, laughing while Scuff continued his relentless assault but utterly enjoying it judging by the mad swishing of his tail. Keith could swear that Smudge rolled his eyes; he wouldn’t put it past him. He heaved a long-suffering sigh and slipped his book back into the backpack they’d brought with them. “C’mon, Smudge. Let’s go rescue our idiots.”

After a quick stretch, Smudge climbed his way up Keith’s arm until he reached his shoulder, nudging his face against Keith’s cheek before settling down. Carefully, Keith stood, keeping both his balance and Smudge’s as he picked up their backpack and hoisted it onto his free shoulder. “You know, you won’t be able to ride up there on me forever, right? You’re gonna get bigger.”

_Mrrrmaa?_

“Well, I mean, you will. And then you won’t fit anymore. You’ll have to walk down there like the rest of us.”

_Myah!_

“Fine. Maybe we’ll get one of those kitty-slings. Carry you around like the spoiled child you are.”

 _Murp_.

“Keith, I’d hate to interrupt your kitty communing but I’m drowning here!”

“You can’t drown in dog drool, Takashi.”

“How can you be so sure?!”

_Boof!_

_Meee-ah._

Keith rolled his eyes and marched up to his husband and their dog, a cat on his shoulder. He never imagined that such a scene would play out as part of his life, that there would be other similar scenes that would play out for time to come. That there would be more days in the parkland, more walks, more snuggles on the sofa, more mornings waking to a cat curled up with a dog in their shared dog/cat-bed in the corner of their bedroom.

He figured his life was already full of love, all that Shiro could give him and all he could give Shiro in return. He was wrong. They found kindred spirits in a soft-hearted darling of a pittie who’d survived more than he should have needed to, and a tiny, ferocious cat who would do anything for his best friend.

They were familiar. And they were true.

 

 

 

 


End file.
